Yeah, believe it or not, I started to speak Swedish. I can read articles, magazines… I’ve been studying Swedish as a “hobby” on Duolingo for a few months. I didn’t take it seriously, and I didn’t think I could really learn a language using an app – but, I was wrong! Well, also Swedish is an easy language, especially compared to, cough cough, Finnish… I’m still studying though, so I can’t say that I’m 100% fluent… Anyway, blueberry cake, aka blåbarskaka!

This is one of those effortless cake recipes. You mix dry ingredients on one side, whisk the others in a particular order, then mix them and finally add blueberries. That’s it. Easy peasy.

I made this cake for the first time about ten days ago, when I was invited to a small dinner gathering with three other friends. We don’t do big dinners these days due to covid. I only meet friends that I trust will be responsible with covid restrictions, and even then, not too big gatherings.

So we were four women that evening, we ate a lovely dinner and then moved onto this cake for dessert. The original plan was to have a quick dinner and then watch a movie, but the conversation was so good and fun that we ended up just going on with that on the dinner table. Delicious food, great conversation, lovely ladies, what more would you want?

But when I first made the cake that time, I did it in a loaf pan and in the end, two corners got burnt. So this time I made it in a rectangle dish. You can still try it yourself as a loaf or also in a round cake pan. Some tips about that are below. Enjoy!
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Ingredients:

Difficulty: Easy
(makes one 20x30cm cake, or one loaf cake, or one 22cm round cake)

Printable PDF-recipe (no photos)

2.5 dl (or 1 cup) fresh blueberries*
3 dl + 1 tbsp + 2 tsp (or 1 1/3 cups or 195 gr) all-purpose flour
1 1/4 tsp baking powder
a pinch of salt
1/2 tsp vanilla sugar
6 tbsp desiccated coconut
115 gr butter, softened in room temperature
1.5 dl + 1 tsp (or 1/2 cup + 2 tbsp + 1 tsp or 150 gr) granulated white sugar
2 large eggs
1 dl + 4 tsp (or 1/2 cup) milk in room temperature
zest of one lemon

*I used pensasmustikka, the larger blueberries native to Northern America but can easily be found here as well.

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1. Preheat the oven to 180C. Grease your dish (20×30 oven dish, a loaf pan, or a 22cm round cake pan) and cover the base (and two sides if four-sided) with a baking paper.

2. Take one tablespoon from the flour and mix it gently with blueberries to cover them completely in flour.

3. Put the rest of the flour and the following ingredients in the list until (incl.) coconut, in a bowl. Whisk a little and put aside.

4. In a mixing bowl, put butter and sugar, and beat for 3-4 minutes in medium speed, until it gets creamy. Scrape the sides of the bowl if needed.

5. Add eggs, one at a time and beat well after each egg. Scrape the sides again if needed.

6. Add half of the flour mixture and slowly beat until fully incorporated.

7. Add milk and continue to beat until fully incorporated. Scrape the sides if needed.

8. Add remaining flour mixture and lemon zest (which I forgot to put the picture of) and beat until everything is mixed well. Again, scrape the sides if needed.

9. Gently fold in the blueberries as evenly as you can inside the batter.

10. Transfer the cake batter into the prepared oven dish. Smoothen the surface using a spatula. Bake in the medium part of the oven for 30-35 minutes (50-55 minutes in a loaf pan, around 35 minutes in a round pan), until the surface, is nicely browned. Let the cake cool down for about 20 minutes before taking it out of the dish. Transfer it to a wire rack to cool completely after that. Enjoy with fresh tea or coffee!